the frig blig

I went in to work today, sunday, in order to migrate a database server to newer hardware. It took less time than I expected, and I only had one small problem to fix afterwards. I was happy, so when I got home earlier than expected I decided to continue sysadmin duties on my home systems. Nothing I attempted at home worked.

Item #1: create a new virtual machine in vmware server. Midway thru creating a virtual disk the red fault lights appear on my mirrored raid disks where the vms are located. The ‘create disk’ task fails. A system reboot displays the scary “the superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem’ error and drops the console into recovery mode. Yikes! But I’ve seen this before, and a hard power-down and restart brings the system back (apparently vmware’s ‘create virtual disk’ routine breaks the raid mirror set). I need to check if there are firmware or driver updates for my raid controller, I suppose. Maybe later.

Item #2: tried to install the newly released version 3-3.5 of cvc_linux vpn client on my fc5 laptop. The .tar.gz file isn’t a valid gzip file, and rpm barfs on the .rpm file. Both downloaded from the vendor’s website twice to make sure the download wasn’t bad. Sheesh.

‘Nuf work for the day; Suzan and I are going out to see the SuperSones (with Justin, vocals & percussion) at the Triple Door shortly and forget about stupid computers for a while.

I wanted to take Suzan to see Merle Haggard at the Paramont tonite, but it didn’t happen. The cold-like symptoms I’ve been trying to suppress reappeared, I felt rundown, and tickets cost a pretty $49.50 apiece. So instead we stayed home and listened to my ancient collection of Hag vinyl. OK I actually played 3 out of 4 albums; we didn’t listen to his ‘Farewell to Elvis’ — in fact I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to that one — I just bought it for the cover. But the Hag is a great songwriter and singer who evolved, at least through 1981, the date of ‘Rainbow Stew’, the last of his albums which I own (and my favorite; the title track is a driving, upbeat hippie song?!). I kind of stopped listening to country music shortly thereafter. So I don’t know if he’s still writing new songs, if they’re better than ever, or if he’s coasting off his long career. But I love his songs because they’re so real. And he’s got such a great deep voice. Hats off to you Merle. Give ‘em a few chills in the Paramount tonite.

I was uninformed at the time, but discovered via last week’s NYTimes Magazine that Syd Barrett died in august. Ummagumma was a huge influence on me during my highschool years, and I followed the band closely for several years, seeing them live in Atlanta around 1978 shortly after the release of DSOTM (coincidentally, the same night my long-lost godson Temuchin was born). Of course I never saw Syd but was a big fan of PATGOD and found his solo releases amusing. Syd be piping on the other side now.

Two celebrities die in the same week and take up tons of printers’ ink and bandwidth. I wasn’t a huge fan of either but I’ll blog about both.

Re: Gerald Ford, I couldn’t recall what position he held before being appointed vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned. I asked a couple of friends who didn’t remember either, just that he once played football. He wasn’t secretary of state…so I looked it up. Prior to his appointment as VP Ford was Republican Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. The 25th amendment to the US constitution stipulates that whenever there is a vacancy in the office of Vice President, the President nominates a successor, who is confirmed by the majority vote of both houses of Congress. So there you have it.

I never forgave him for pardoning Nixon. But enough about Ford, it’s in all the papers.

Re: James Brown, I didn’t spend a lot of time moving to his groove. The closest I came to seeing JB was during my stint with Adivan, a Tallahassee band from the late 1980s. Our bass player Bob Barker had previously played in a band which was the warmup act for a JB tour, when ‘Say It Loud’ was JB’s big hit. And when I was in highschool, my friend Chuck liked to play ‘Doing the Duke’ at his parents house when we skipped school there. Nowadays I often sing ‘Get On Up’ to recalcitrant servers while waiting for them to finish rebooting.

What’s been playing in my head for THE PAST WEEK is ‘8 miles high’ by them byrds. I missed the actual release of this tune back in the 1960s, only discovering the band during my college years in the 1970s. The song got retriggered when I heard it at Zeitgeist a week ago and darn if it isn’t still firmly lodged in me head, playing incessantly. I don’t even remember the whole song, it’s just the beginning that keeps repeating. I guess you could say this tune has legs.

Makes me reflect that the tunes one hears during highschool and college years stick with you pretty much your whole life. And not just the ones you like either (luckily I like this one).

And the cabbage: Suzan cut open what appeared to be a normal green head of cabbage t’other nite only to discover an ingrown stem taking up most of the bottom portion, leaving only the top 20-30 percent packed full of leaves like a normal head. We were shocked.

Suzan and I saw Tony Furtado at the Laurelthirst with C, Dave and friends Saturday nite. Quite the picker. My brain is dead; long live my brain.  (Possibly because I like Portland more than Seattle?)